It is the most famous heckle in Scottish theatre history. In an exclamation of nationalist zeal after a performance of Douglas at Edinburgh’s Canongate playhouse in 1756, an audience member declared playwright John Home to be better than England’s most revered dramatist. “Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?” went the cry.
Safe to say posterity cares for Shakespeare more than Home, but the performance of Douglas remains a symbolic flashpoint. As presented by Brian Logan, writer, director and Guardian comedy critic, the play – and its excited reception – exemplifies the national and religious schisms that have played out in Scotland ever since. It is one of those theatrical events that meant more politically than it did artistically.
On the one hand, we find a post-Union Scotland both beholden and resistant to a dominant England. Logan shows an Edinburgh establishment eager for the success of Douglas almost as a matter of principle even before it is put in front of an audience, not least after its brusque rejection by David Garrick in London.
On the other hand, we find a post-John Knox church torn between being “o’er pagan for you, o’er pious for me,” as Home (Lewie Watson) puts it in the play. Under pressure from those who see plays as sinful, regardless of how wholesome their message, Home is forced to resign his ministry in East Lothian.
All this makes a promising premise but it is a shouty, one-note production, co-presented by A Play, a Pie and a Pint with Aberdeen Performing Arts and the Traverse. Written in Scots, the play switches from a soft-target send-up of 18th-century acting to a two-dimensional debate about art and morality. The play is on fertile ground, but fails to settle on the characters and conflict that would give the factionalism of the early Scottish Enlightenment due dramatic weight.
